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History museum on the move: Denver diorama gets kid-glove care

Carlotta Espinoza lies on a platform
above the Colorado History
Museum's diorama of 1860s Denver.
Built in the early 1930s, the diorama includes
miniature figures of people and animals.
Espinoza is working to secure the figures,
many of which she resculpted during
restoration work in the 1980s. (Cyrus McCrimmon, The Denver Post)

As the Colorado History Museum prepares to move from its outdated home, curators and staff are going to extraordinary lengths to pack and protect the fragile displays and exhibits.

Perhaps none are more fragile than the diorama.

The 75-year-old model of early Denver is a 12-foot-square plaster depiction of the first settlement along Cherry Creek and the South Platte River in 1860. Some 350 tiny structures dot the display, complete with brown-resin troughs depicting the creek and the river.

Although the diorama has no street names and virtually no recognizable buildings, it's possible to guess fairly accurately where today's landmarks first sprung up. For instance, Larimer Square, in its embryonic stage, is fairly well recognizable because of its proximity to Cherry Creek, with early Auraria emerging to the south.

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The diorama was built on a heavy wood frame supporting several layers of thick plywood, over which was poured plaster about an inch deep.

Museum staff, led by Moya Hansen, curator of the documents and fine arts department, determined that the display was too heavy to move intact, but its scenery was too fragile to remove. So they decided to cut it into four manageable sections, with the structures and figures left intact.

Carlotta Espinoza, a sculptor, along with Judy Greenfield, an art conservator who appreciates the "archaeology of objects," were charged with securing and stabilizing the 350 tiny structures, along with twice that many figures, horses, wagons, fences and even tiny cats. A wooden walkway capable of holding a person was built to span the diorama. Espinoza and Greenfield lie on the walkway while fiddling with the figures.

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Once everything was secured, workers took reciprocating saws underneath the structure and, following the original joints, sawed the diorama into the four sections. A few structures had to be removed from the saws' paths.

The diorama was built in the early 1930s as part of the Federal Emergency Relief Act of 1933, a federal stimulus package during the Great Depression that hired millions of unemployed Americans to build roads, dams, schools and even art projects.

The diorama is the largest of the museum's 78 dioramas built during the Depression. Designed by Edgar McMechen, it took six months to build at the scale of A/af to 1 inch, which makes streets about as wide as a thumb. The structures all are wood, while the figures were first carved in wood, then a plaster mold was made and they were cast in lead.

"The children are so small, they're like little dust motes," Greenfield said. Pet cats, like a white one on a fence, can be seen only with a magnifying glass.

Many of the cast-lead figures disintegrated over the years.

So Espinoza, who created many of the wildlife scenes at the Museum of Nature & Science, spent a good portion of the 1980s rebuilding about 30 dioramas, re-sculpting the figures out of wax.

"I love this job," she said. "It's so interesting to learn about early Denver."

The museum must be out of its building by May 1, 2010, with its exhibits in storage in Lowry and elsewhere. The new museum, a block south on Broadway, will be completed by late 2011.

Carlotta Espinoza is working to secure the figures,
many of which she resculpted during
restoration work in the 1980s, shown above. The diorama was cut into four sections
Friday as the museum packs up for its
move into a new building. (Colorado History Museum)

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